Italy's top antitrust agency announced on Monday that it had launched an anti-monopoly investigation into cloud storage services operated by apple, Dropbox and Google after receiving several lawsuits for unfair business practices, the website of the US newspaper Capitol reported on the 7th.
The Italian competition authority (AGCM) said there were six investigations into how Google drive, Apple's icloud and Dropbox run cloud services in Italy, which were "related to alleged improper business practices and possible improper terms in contracts.".
"The survey specifically focuses on whether Google and apple collect and use user data for commercial purposes and whether it has had an undue impact on consumers," AGCM said
In 2020, the Italian antitrust authorities have been actively investigating and suing top high-tech companies. For example, in late July, AGCM searched the offices of apple and Amazon to assess whether the two companies had monopolies in selling Apple products and popular beats headphones. The purpose of the investigation is to determine whether Apple and Amazon have reached an anti competitive agreement to curb other third-party e-retailers.
In addition, in recent years, EU agencies have increased the supervision and anti-monopoly investigation of high-tech companies. In 2017, the European Union's antitrust watchdog fined Facebook 110 million euros for providing misleading information when it bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014.
In addition to the antitrust investigation, Google, apple and other technology giants are also facing the situation of high digital tax.
It has been reported that since 2020, Italy has officially imposed a 3% digital tax on technology companies with global revenues of more than $880 million or revenues of more than $6.5 million in Italy, with technology giants such as Google and apple bearing the brunt. This makes these technology giants feel dissatisfied, and some enterprises have taken some countermeasures. In addition, according to authoritative media reports on September 3, apple, Google and Amazon will raise prices in Europe, shifting costs to cope with digital services tax. Amazon, for example, announced that it would start charging British corporate customers a 2% fee from September, and Google said on the night of September 2 that it would start charging extra fees for advertising in parts of Google and Youtube from November 1 this year.